Opposes police compilation of scanned license-plate data

Published 5:16 pm, Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The use of cameras by the police to read every license plate it passes and store that information indefinitely is reprehensible.

If a plate is identified as somehow in violation, by all means it should be corrected. But the rest should be deleted immediately from any database. It amounts to a search without a warrant, I believe, and the police and the government have no business maintaining a database on the whereabouts of citizens.

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to The News-Times on this very issue which was accompanied, on the same page, by an essay by Douglas Fuchs (president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association).

Mr. Fuchs seems quite enamored of the gee-whiz technology and seems to have no regard for the ethics of monitoring the citizens of Connecticut.

"The general public wants us to have this" he says.

Emphatically, Mr. Fuchs, no, the general public does not want you to have this. The general public wants to be able to go about its daily business without living in a police state.

Fuchs says that "only human beings" such as police officers will have access to the system and its records.

Wrong. No matter what the original intent of technology is, sooner or later unintended consequences arise and others will find any excuse to abuse or otherwise misuse such data.

I reiterate there is no reason for the police and the government to constantly monitor and store the movements of law-abiding citizens. This is yet another classic case of the camel's nose under the tent.